Thousands attend kinky San Fran festival

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 30 (UPI) -- The 25th Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco drew hundreds of thousands of leather, bondage and sexual fetish enthusiasts to the 13-block neighborhood.

The celebration Sunday included spanking booths, nude vendors and a man dressed only in an 11-foot Burmese python, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Monday.

"It brings kink out of the closet," said Al Waddell, 58, one of more then 250 vendors at the festival. "There's absolutely nothing wrong with kinky play as long as it's between consenting adults."

However, about 10 protesters gathered outside the event disagreed. They distributed brochures describing homosexuality as a "disorder" and encouraged passersby to vote in favor of Proposition 8, which would overturn a California Supreme Court ruling that a ban on same-sex marriage violated the state constitution.

"If you go in there, you see public nudity and street orgies," said Anthony Gonzales of San Jose, the president of the St. Joseph's Men's Society, a Roman Catholic fraternal group. "We want to know why this is allowed on the streets of San Francisco without any sanction at all ... it's anarchy."